Dear all
EDIT: the zip file really is, now, available. The version on offer includes various debugging messages that are displayed to the player.
With much help from Thargoid, I've now got good-looking and powerful turrets on my 'Fer-de-Lance 3G' ship. Moreover, with lots (*lots*) of work, I've created a good (but probably still buggy) cloaking and general AI for cloaked-pirate versions of my ships. There is a hopefully just-about-functional AI for the bounty-hunter versions, too; and various trader versions just use the standard trader AI.
The OXP is available here:
http://www.box.net/shared/39ao2b8y2v.
There's still work and testing to do, though. But I thought people might want to try the thing out as it stands. The way that the formidable 'Pirate King' version fights is quite interesting - and the OXP, as it stands, will generate one of those ships (plus escorts!) on launch from the station (although, occasionally, it/they will be 'masked' and so won't appear on the scanner). There are some save files included, too - and a brochure.
Thanks to all for their help.
PS: I do know that there is a little more work to be done on the turrets.